First M42 For Me at last but a lot of frustration too.

[lensman57]

Hi,

After two aborted attempts at imaging M42 as my first ever DSO, at last I managed to get something from my setup last night, no excuse for me this time the sky cooperated very nicely but I did have to rush as the Orion belt now dissapears within half hour behind garden trees and a telephone post. I used my OpticStar AR90s, just a simple well built achromat I am afraid but at F5.5 is reasonably fast, the camera was a standard Canon 1000d + a Baader Neodymium filter and I mounted the whole lot on my EQ5 pro SynScan none guided which behaved a little better than last night in tracking, last night was a disaster. Anyhow I tooK 12 subs at 35 seconds and 12 darks , no bias, flat or anything else which would improved the matter without doubt. Stacking was in DSS and a little post processsing in CS2 but the image is very noisy and I will have to learn how to get consistent results from the processing as time goes on, one of the trial images had a lot of red nebulasity in it but the balance of this one is slightly better. Now I need to get the none functioning guiding set up sorted out before I go any further as the mount shows star trails at around 1.5 minutes.

Regards,

A.G

[Leveye]

Really good for 35 second exposures id say maybe just a bit lighter edit and your done.

[Scott]

Great first dso, It's a great feeling when you finally get that first image on your screen isn't it.

[Bizibilder]

Well done - thats really good for such short exposures. - By the way, keep your subs as you can use them again if you get some longer exposures to make a composite image.

[lensman57]

Well done - thats really good for such short exposures. - By the way, keep your subs as you can use them again if you get some longer exposures to make a composite image.

Hi,

Many thanks to you all, such an inspiration, right now I have left the scope outside to its job on M81 and M82 hhope the mount tracks well for a couple of minutes. If it works out will report back.

Regards,

A.G

[Twisted Lip]

Great first attempt, I wish my first one was as good as that!